Tony Hawk and His Son Riley Talk Skateboarding Nepotism and What It’s Like to See Each Other Slam (Exclusive)

Tony Hawk has invented countless tricks, built skate parks around the world, and created a billion-dollar video-game franchise. But his legacy is greater than all that: Meet his son Riley.

Riley Hawk is hungry. In most articles about a relatively famous son and his very famous father, such a statement would be a metaphor for the son's drive, his ambition, those good old heir-to-the-throne machinations. Here it's just physiologically true. Riley stayed up late playing guitar and can't remember when he last ate. Tony Hawk drops a bagel into the toaster and grabs some cream cheese from the fridge. Riley moved out of the house a few years ago, and Tony has clearly missed having him around. He works to play it cool, but he's stoked his eldest son stopped by. He takes a plate from the cupboard, two coffee mugs. He steals glances at Riley scrolling through his Instagram feed. He smiles.

Father and son are mirror images of each other: tall and loose-limbed, thin and sandy-haired. This morning, they're both limping. Riley has been battling a handrail trick for days and has a gnarly heel bruise; Tony's knees are creaky from almost 40 years of paradigm-shifting skateboarding, and he's been chasing a few new tricks, too. Both men are also stressed. Skateboarding is in a strange and strangely vulnerable place. It's bigger than ever—a multi-billion-dollar industry and officially heading to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo—but independently owned skate shops and core companies are shuttering in unnerving numbers. Tony and Riley are on tight deadlines to finish filming hugely anticipated video parts, which are the professional skater's equivalent of an author's books and which, at such a portentous time in skateboarding, are crucial.

They eat in the elder Hawk's living room, an effortlessly chic space with high ceilings. Depictions of hawks abound—paintings, sculptures, a stout and intricate Lego construction perched high above with its wings spread. There's also a lot of Hollywood memorabilia, including an honest-to-God chicken bucket from Breaking Bad's Los Pollos Hermanos and two pairs of honest-to-God sunglasses from Raising Arizona. They don't talk much over breakfast, but Tony often seems on the verge of speaking and then thinks better of it, not wanting to smother Riley with questions or affection. Their relationship is surprisingly and poignantly normal. The child is father of the man, and the father will always be putty in the son's hands. They sit with the same slouch. They have the same habit of clearing their throat before speaking. They wear matching Lakai shoes, one of Riley's sponsors.

But, of course, every reflection is at once itself and its opposite, identity reversed. Tony is clean-shaven and clean-cut, his hair graying at his temples. In his dark hoodie and dark jeans, he looks like a nice guy who made an unexpected killing in Silicon Valley. Riley's hair is long and tucked behind his ears, his beard stylishly unkempt, his arms mapped with tattoos. A few of his fingers are inked, too, and others are adorned with chunky turquoise rings. His entire demeanor recalls a young Ozzy Osbourne, so it's no surprise that Riley also fronts the stoner rock band Petyr. “It's pronounced ‘Peter,’ ” Tony says, proudly blasting some of his favorite songs. That he genuinely loves the band is endearing, not least because his musical tastes skew toward the Cure, Gang of Four, and Modest Mouse.

And then there's their skating. They are among the best in the world in their respective specialties—Riley skates street, and Tony focuses on ramps—but career-wise, they are at opposite points. Riley turned pro on his 21st birthday, and now, at age 24, he's more thrilling to watch than ever. There's a timelessness to his style on and off the board, a flow and power that is again reminiscent of Black Sabbath, the band's dark and lasting austerity. He's also fiercely resilient, having overcome numerous catastrophic injuries. “He's had reconstructive surgeries on both ankles. For most people, those are career-enders,” Tony says. “If I'd gone through that, even with my success, I would have said, ‘Fuck it. I'm out.’ ”

At 49, Tony is still doing mind-blowingly difficult tricks and putting out impossibly progressive video parts, but he's long retired from competition. His current signature-model skateboard doesn't even boast his name. Instead, the graphic is simple and telling: block letters that spell out “Riley's Dad.” He continues to shape the future of skateboarding with his company, Birdhouse, and its elite team—including Lizzie Armanto, one of the few female pros in the sport, who recently nabbed the coveted cover of Thrasher Magazine—and he's full-on embracing his de facto role as the sport's goodwill ambassador. His namesake foundation has raised over $5 million for public skate parks, often built in underprivileged communities, and he's spending a lot more time (and money) in places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, and South Africa to introduce kids to skating. “At this point,” Tony says, “my motivation is doing what's best for skating as a whole. It has to be about more than the bottom line. It just has to be.”

GQ Style: So let's talk about the upcoming videos. Riley, did you get the handrail trick?

Riley: No, we kept getting kicked out and going back. Then I landed on my toes on the rail and fell onto my stomach, and it got me pretty good on my ribs. I wasn't really banking on that trick for the Baker video, but I really wanted it, you know? Now I just wish someone would come and rip that handrail out of the ground or cut it down. I just want it out of my life. Just knowing it's there and that I got close to the trick is hard. I've definitely lost sleep over it. I'm really happy with all of the other tricks in the video, though.

Tony: There's a strange and kind of frustrating aspect to modern skating. Tricks are so technical and you have to be so precise to do something new that you can try the same trick, in the same way, in the same place, for weeks and not get it, and then one day, one try, it clicks. There's no learning process. It's a lottery. A few of the tricks in my Birdhouse part happened like that, and I don't like it. In the past, you tweak something and figure it out, and then you'd unlock the secret. A lot of tricks aren't like that now. I do them, but I don't learn anything.

Riley: Yeah, when I start trying a trick, I just have to keep trying. It's like a one-in-a-million kind of thing.

Tony: But that to me is super disappointing. We should be celebrating that we did it or that it worked out this one time, and there is an elation that comes when you make a new trick, a feeling that can't be matched. But it's short-lived. I like honing a skill and learning something, knowing you can do it going forward.

Riley: I think of it kind of differently, though. It's cool to think that you use all of the skills from other things you've learned through the years to crack one crazy trick in one moment. No, it's not going to happen every time, but everything you've done up until then made it happen that one time. You could be flailing for hours or days, but then on one try your body just takes over and you kind of black out and then you're rolling away. That can be totally satisfying.

Tony: Skaters are constantly looking for challenges. I was super happy when I won the lottery on that trick. I was definitely satisfied. I was like, “Finally. I got it on video, so I'm not going to spend another fucking day on it.” And then immediately after was this feeling of: What's next?

Riley: One of the things I've noticed about skaters, especially once you get to a certain level, is that nobody wants to find themselves in that greatest-hits era.

Tony:[laughs] I'm getting close, though!

Riley: It's either in your brain or not, but for whatever reason, skating just channels this kind of desire to keep pushing yourself. You're not discounting what you've accomplished already, but you want to do the next thing. And the next and next.

Tony: The successful skaters do. There's plenty of people who are content to play the hits, but career-wise, you're not going to keep moving forward if you don't keep producing.

Is that what's happening with the industry as a whole, a kind of inertia that led to so many shops and companies closing?

Tony: I just think it splintered. There's a lot of people who skate as a hobby. They like skating, maybe they watch it on television, but they're not actively buying skateboards or skate gear. That has really hurt the industry. And, you know, the conglomerates have come in and bought up a lot of brands and then those brands get recycled into other things. It's all taken a toll. And endorsement deals have changed for all of sports. Everything is short-term, social-media-based. Being a pro skater is not what it used to be, and skate companies aren't as profitable because everything is so diluted.

Riley: It's definitely stressful.

Tony: In full transparency, I've dumped so much money into this Birdhouse video, so much money that I have no hope of recouping it, but the hope is that it will bring back sales. Because our sales don't justify what I pay the team riders. It's a big risk, and it's so weird to think I have one of the best teams in the world and [Birdhouse] can barely cover their meager paychecks. But, I mean, these skaters are risking their lives.

Riley: Yeah, I remember coming to my dad a while back because I was tripped out by what's going to happen in the next year or so. Skating's definitely huge, but companies are going under and no one's buying stuff. Sure, they're buying longboards and penny boards, and maybe they wear Thrasher shirts, but at best it's a weekend-warrior type of thing. They're not out jumping fences, getting kicked out by security guards, getting hurt, and having to deal with it. I just feel like I have to keep doing this no matter what. It's who I am.

Tony: And that's been clear for so long. Early on, there were claims of nepotism and people saying Riley's got it easy because I'm his father, but it was the opposite. It would have been way easier for him to go in a different direction, but everyone eventually saw that he has this super creative and out-of-the-box way of skating. I remember the first time he asked for advice on a trick that he was learning, and it was a trick I couldn't do. I was like, “I'm really flattered you asked me this, but you're on your own.” Now he has his own fans and followers, and even at my demos, skaters come up to me all the time and say, “Dude! Riley's sick!” They're not excited to see me. They're excited to see someone connected to Riley. Lately, I get people asking me how to get Petyr to play somewhere.

Riley: But the same thing happens to me. Skaters will come up to me and say, “Where's Tony?! Where's your dad?!” In my head, I'm always thinking, Where's your dad? I mean, are you 24 and just constantly hanging out with your dad? It's bizarre. People just assume that we're always together, just carrying our boards and looking for places to do demos. That's not what my life is like. I skate, play music, work on motorcycles. I've been hurt a lot recently, so I've been watching a lot of TV. I've watched Stranger Things about five times because I was wearing this ankle boot and couldn't really get off the couch. Each time one of my roommates would start the show, I'd just watch it again.

What's it like for you to watch each other fall? Do you see each other as another skater, or is that overridden by the father-and-son bond?

Tony: A little of both. I've seen Riley get injured really badly, and that's hard for me, but I'm not going to discourage him from doing it. He's always had a really good sense of his limitations and how to test the waters. I trust Riley's instincts, but it sucks to see him hurt.

Riley: It's definitely scary, but you just have to shut it out. You have to do that when you're skating and when you're watching a friend or family member.

Tony: The scariest is watching someone try something they have no business trying.

Riley: You have to get to a point where you accept that you or someone you're watching might get hurt. When you're in that mode, you kind of cross a mental barrier. You understand either you're going to get hurt or you're going to ride away from this particular try. Once you've accepted it, you're free to really try it. There's not going to be this big shock if you get hurt. You've already come to terms with it. When it happens, you're lying on the ground or I'm watching him at the bottom of a ramp, and you're thinking, Well, okay, I was ready for that.

Tony: But also there's a lesson in that, right? Because even in that worst moment, you understand not to do it that way again.

Riley: Yeah, it always sucks when it happens, but you know you would have rather tried and slammed than just gone through the motions for two hours. You go home and you're not wrecked, but you also didn't give it everything you had. That's kind of worse in a way.

Tony: There is a peace in that, for sure. There is a peace in knowing that you really did give it your all. There's a calm, even if it takes you out.

Bret Anthony Johnstonis the author of the novel ‘Remember Me Like This’ and the director of the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.

This story appears in the Fall 2017 issue of GQ Style with the title “Birdmen.”